It hasn't been that long since The
Avengers was released in theatres. Critics all over the world slammed the
movie as it came nowhere near expectations and fans of the original TV
series were also very disappointed with the movie. I must confess to only
ever seeing one episode on television a few years back and I felt even
that was unimpressive, so I go into watching this DVD with no high hopes
at all.

The story (?) goes a little
something like this. Ralph Fiennes plays John Steed (Looks like Stan
Laurel) and Uma Thurman takes the part of the catsuited Emma Peel, two
British secret agents. Sean Connery has the role of the villain, Sir
August De Wynter a man who wants to control the world through a high tech
weather machine.

The Avengers DVD comes on two
sides, one is the full screen pan and scan version, the other a widescreen
1.85:1 version. I am personally all for this as more and more people are
getting on the DVD bandwagon with not only full players, but also DVD-ROM
so the more viewing choices the better I say.

Once you place the disc in your DVD
drive you are greeted with an excellent animated menu (Not quite as good
as The Truman Show's). The menu has the usual Jump To Scene, Special
Features and Adverts for other DVD titles by Warner. While the menu looks
great, it's nothing without a bundle of special features and unfortunately
The Avengers doesn't have anything great to offer the viewer apart from
the very basic behind the scenes info and a theatrical trailer.

Once I started to watch the movie,
I was quite surprised to see how gorgeous the image quality was and not
only that - I felt the directing and photography were also quite superb.
The Avengers contains a mass of great colors that are clear and vivid, so
on DVD they really stand out. The Widescreen 1.85:1 version on the other
side of the disc is also excellent in terms of image quality.

The main problems with The Avengers
are the acting and storyline because the action isn't all that bad either
and if you don't take it too seriously it isn't a bad waste of an hour and
a half and as I mentioned earlier, it is gorgeous to look at.

To sum up - The movie is badly
acted and has some truly awful lines but you can have fun watching it as
long as you do not take any of it seriously. If you like style over
content then this might be for you, but personally I think there is room
for both.